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Abandoned Legend of Grayskull Artwork

Hi! I know it's been a while since I posted new artwork, and this isn't exactly new, but I wanted to post something while I'm busy finishing other commitments. A while back (long long long while, like circa 2004), I dreamt up ideas for a King Grayskull spin off, thinking that the original mini-comics would work as the basis for King Grayskull's origin. Since then I've learned of other plans to reconcile King Grayskull with Powers of Grayskull, and I quite liked them, although I resisted the idea of He-Ro coming before King Grayskull for a while because KG seemed more primitive. But in the end I realized that KG was pretty much there to set up the modern (for 200x) version of He-Man and it was more work to sandwich anything for He-Ro in between the two than it was to simply put He-Ro earlier. Still, I had put some time into it back then, so here's what most of that looked like.

Yeah, I thought I was being so clever using the old PoG letters. I'm glad it's back now with the MOTUC stickers.

My plan had been for King Grayskull to have begun as Primus, who goes through basically the same origin we saw in the first He-Man minicomic where he stumbled upon the Green Goddess and saved her from a monster. He would have returned to find most of his tribe wiped out by barbarian raiders working for the bad guys. One of the lone survivors would have been Tee-La, based on DC Teela which again I thought I was being real obscure and clever with but thankfully she's less obscure now. In the back of my mind she would have become Sharella, an design link I kept all the way to the Unofficial bios. Iceman colored this version of Primus with Savage He-Man colors, which I loved. This particular version of him lasted up until early plans for one of the Book of Evil chapters.

KG would have aged quite a bit in the stories, even sporting a beard to better distinguish him from He-Man. I hate this art, particularly that badly proportioned guard, but it was early on and I was thrilled just to get the costume right. My God I was pausing VHS copies back then!

Grayskull would amass various allies on his journey looking to rescue the enslaved members of his tribe. He'd befriend a tribe of amazons, and meet an outcast king from the Caligars named Ceratin (based on Dr. Omega's interpretation of the caligar elder). He'd also meet the Fire People and eventually fall in love with Veena only to discover her father was the man who destroyed his original tribe.

I'd wanted King Tamusk to be the villain for KG, the idea being he had fallen into a very dark and cursed phase and turned evil. It would be KG's actions that might eventually redeem him. Tamusk would have been Veena' s father, until I learned about Lord Bryon of the House of Swann. Masque and Shokoti were conspirators in this part of the story as well, although I was back and forth about that. At one point I revised it so that Shokoti was just a girl who would become powerful later, but then I dropped that too.

I was particularly excited about staging one of Grayskull's adventures involving Evil-Lyn's grandmother, Queen Mal-Lyssa. She would have hired KG to retrieve the Ram Stone for her, only it's a trick and he has to fight her to save her own queendom from her insanity. In the end he'd leave her son Zanthor in charge, and Zanthor would eventually become the Faceless One.

I'd also had the idea that King Grayskull took many lovers, Conan-style, and that King Hiss might have been his son by Zilora--a more "adult" take on KG's adventures obviously. Zilora would have died, and her son have fallen into the hands of evil wizards and possibly a time-displaced Fang Man who would raise him to be the evil bad guy we all know.

Finally the whole saga would have ended with the revelation that He-Ro's alter ego Gray was King Grayskull's son, born after his death and Hordak's defeat. Eldor would and the Filmation character Tauron would have been old rivals like Gandalf and Saruman trying to turn Gray for good or evil. The result of these twists is that KG and King Hiss would have been half-brothers, but I wasn't really going to let them know it. I don't agree with people who dislike all the family connections fans imagine, it is short hand for drama and admittedly it's too easy but that doesn't mean it should be avoided (he says before Zodac and Hordak became brothers too). Anyway, all this is gone now, but it was a nice imagining for a while. I've moved on, but I thought this would make a nice update for now. I promise to get more bios done soon!

One word, no make it five words wow, wow, wow, wow and WOW!!! I loved some of the MYP cartoons and this would have been an awesome cartoon series or even if this was in comic book form. Has much has I am glad that DC are doing a MOTU comic, in my personal opinion it is not a patch on the MV creations comics by Val and Emiliano and your concept would have fitted nicely with those comics.

Gbagok you deserve a knighthood from King Randor for your Stories (Book of Evil, Return to Anwat-Gar and Slave City) your bio's and every other bit of art you bless us with. Thank you kind sir!!

But before, all I remember was your art of He-Ro that had the tag "son of KG" in the image and some fans always kept thinking
that was official. MAN I was part of many, many discussions trying to keep "facts straight" for people (from 80s info to MVC un-used info).

Nice, man! I really like seeing concepts of what could have been for movies and games and the like and it's no different with your art/story stuff. I really like that image of Mal-Lyssa with her arms crossed like a boss.

Great work G, thanks for sharing these
The idea for Evil-Lyn's grandmother, is very interesting and your concepts for Grayskulls allies are much more suited to Preternia then ones we got in the new Classics mini-comics. Don't think I like the idea of Grayskull being King Hiss's farther though.

Really cool. The story-line would of been really cool. Evil-Lyn's grandmother and the Amazons. Pretty awesome. Some of the story-line could be blended in the "Book Of Evil 2". I just love the story-line idea of Queen Mal-Lyssa being involved in the early days of King Grayskull. There has got to be some incident or person that causes Granamyr's extreme dislike of Humans. Maybe it was something revolving around Nazgul. You and oICEMANo always get me thinking about story-lines. Love the designs of Lord Masque's servants and Gray.

I also enjoy your (re-)imagining of Preternia and King Grayskull. This would have been a series I would very much enjoy, particularly the more "adult" take. I feel like MotU is sometimes over-simplied or overly kid-friendly, so it's refreshing to see Grayskull in a more Conan-esque / adult light. The property finally gets to mature along with its fans.

I am torn on how I feel about certain aspects of the story (i.e. Hiss/Hsss being Grayskull's son), but overall I think it's a really enjoyable vision.

I always felt that He-Ro should pre-date KG. I can see why you tried to go the other way here though. As you say, King Grayskull looks more barbaric so it could be argued that he looks like he should be first. However, to me, it just feels "right" to have He-Ro come first instead. I'm guessing I get that instinctive reaction because he was first in the vintage mythology.